Being a Dog Parent

Before we got Hunter (our dog) back in January, neither Nathan or I were really "dog people".  We both had dogs growing up, but for our married life we've never had animals...and especially in the house.

We kind of got Hunter on a whim, which is odd because we hardly ever do ANYTHING on a whim.  He was 7 weeks old when we drove 4.5 hours to pick him up and bring him back to our house.  And we are so thankful that we did.  He has become part of our family!

Most of our friends have children and we love being so much a part of their lives.  Lately, I find myself understanding some of their stories because I'm experiencing some of these things with Hunter!  I respond to their kid stores with a story of my own...and it's kind of odd.  I hear myself saying, "I'm not trying to compare raising a child to training my dog, but..."

It's funny to us how we've looked at parents and been able to see how important it is to be consistent and then deal with that while training Hunter!  Nathan had him potty trained within his first week at our house.  We hadn't had a dog before so everything we did with him was pretty much just trial-n-error.  

Hunter is terribly stubborn!  One of the things we cannot break him of is getting in our laundry.  He always wants to be carrying around one of Nathan's shirts or socks.  It's honestly really cute and knowing how much he loves Nathan, it's a bit endearing!  We swat him with a magazine, scold him, make him go lay in his bed until we say he can get up, etc...and he gets that he's doing wrong, but IT DOES NOT STOP HIM from doing it again when he gets the chance! :)

And his food, oh dear...he's so spoiled.  I cut up meat or mix his food with broth nearly every day.  We went through a phase where he wasn't eating well and now I'm positive I've really ruined the chances of him eating plain dog food again.  Now if you try to give him a bite of something, he sniffs it first to see if he's even interested and he didn't use to do that.  We had to give him a pill awhile back so I buried it in a hot dog so he would eat it.  Crazy thing had it all in his mouth and ate AROUND the pill.  He just spit the pill out and looked up at me like, "that's nasty"!

All of that to say, we've turned into those people that just adore their pet!  How did this happen? :)